Bulgera 333xl 120 watt tube amplifire problems, HELP?

[MattDWilliams]

Ok, i have the Bulgera 333xl 120 watt amplifire, i guess the guy(store) i got it from gave me a 125 volt cord and the amp is only 120 volts. So when i was playing yesterday i noticed that my volume went down totally in a song and looked at my amp and it was smoking! I popped the back mesh plate off and loosend the actual amp from the cab, and noticed that the little circuit board that the plug plugs into was really black but yet the amp was still on, i plugged it in with the amp out and turned it on and the circuit board started sparking and smoking again. I cannot find that circuit board anywhere on the internet. But keep in mind its not the whole amp circuit its just the one, that im guessing, switches the power from ac/dc. Can anyone tell me where i could find one, and if it is the chords fault to why it did that?

[Cygnus X1]

Not to insult you but if you think a 125V cord actually pushes 5V more than a 120V cord,
then you not be anywhere near the inside of an amplifier.
Take it to a tech.

[Jazz P Bass]

Yeah, it is NOT the cord that is giving you grief.
That Vac line in circuit board has a bunch of movistors on it.
They "limit: the start up current. (and get hot in doing so)
For some reason, these boards are not soldered very well on an awful lot of amps.
I have had them come in where the movistors literally fell off the board.
I would take the amp to a tech and have them clean up & resolder the board.

[Gtr_tech]

AmpliFIRE? Now thats always a problem

[Jazz P Bass]

Bulgera.
Isn't that a country in Europe?

[loudthud]

Put it back together like you never touched it and take it back where you got it. They might give you a new amp.

[Enzo]

Any competent amplifier technician can easily repair that little AC board anyway. It is a matter of reworking the solder and cleaning away any carbon.

Ther is a lot of thermal stress on that board, and I blame lead-free RoHS solder for the problem. It is less forgiving of the resultant mechanical stress.

[Jazz P Bass]

I will say that they certainly give you enough circuit trace on that Vac board.
I would lay the MOV leads over onto the board & run a real fat solder bead over the entire trace, component to component.

[Enzo]

I have found that little board and the solder to the thermistors to be THE most common problem on those Bugera heads, well, after tubes of course.

I have resoldered them with good old 63/37 and not a one of them has come back.

Same thing with those Mackie/Tapco Thump subwoofers with the cracked solder on the output filter board. When I resolder them with plain old fashioned leaded solder, they don;t come back.

I blame the lead free solder.